The Weekly Iteration
Learn to write better code in less than 30 minutes a week.
The Weekly Iteration is our video series where we explore new frameworks and languages, dig in to advanced coding patterns, and share the techniques we use on projects to build robust and maintainable applications. We're currently on a break from recording new episodes, but be sure to check out the many videos we've released previously.
Videos
Chris Toomey and Derek Prior
Database views are a great way to separate the complexities of database persistence from your application logic. Unfortunately Rails doesn't have built-in support for them, making them difficult to work with. Scenic, a new gem from thoughtbot,...
Matthew Sumner and Chris Toomey
REST is the core architectural pattern we use to build our Rails applications, but it's not always clear what exactly is and isn't REST. Tune in as Matt Sumner joins Chris to discuss exactly what REST is, and how best to embrace it in your Rails...
Chris Toomey and Derek Prior
SSH is a foundational topic for anyone working on the web, and at a minimum it's important to understand how SSH is used for authentication with Git and similar tools. In this episode we'll cover these basics as well as some of the more...
Ryan Coughlin and Chris Toomey
Responsive design is a critical approach to making sure your content is useful and readable on the increasingly large array of device sizes in use today. Tune in as Chris and Ryan discuss the ins and outs of responsive design, sharing the...
Joshua Clayton
This week, Chris is joined by thoughtbot's Development Director in Boston, Josh Clayton, to talk about factory_bot; a topic near and dear to Josh's heart, as he's been the maintainer of the project for over five years. FactoryBot is one of...
Joshua Clayton and Chris Toomey
Rails makes many of our day to day tasks much easier, but sometimes this ease comes at a cost. Consistently across applications we see a lack of encapsulation and the shared global state of controllers and views to be one of the biggest sources of...
Chris Toomey
gitsh, a thoughtbot open-source project, is an interactive shell specifically designed for git. This week, Chris shows us how it can really streamline our workflow.
Chris Toomey
On this week's episode, Chris takes us through everything we need to work with PDFs in our Rails apps: the easiest way to generate them, how to properly serve them as responses in our controllers, and even how to test them.
Chris Toomey and Derek Prior
On this week's episode, Chris is joined by Derek Prior to discuss Rspec's Bisect, a tool to track down order-dependence in your test suite and banish pesky intermittent test failures.
Chris Toomey and Ben Orenstein
Recently, we ran a group-coding app-building contest for Upcase subscribers. In this video, Ben and Chris review each of the submissions, both highlighting great aspects and suggesting some areas for improvement. Live code review at its finest!
Chris Toomey and Harry Schwartz
"Just mark it as executable and place it somewhere on your PATH." If that sentence leaves you with more questions than answers, then today's episode is right up your alley. Chris & Harry team up to provide a concise but thorough introduction...
Chris Toomey and Harry Schwartz
We've avoided it for a hundred episodes now, but the time has finally come to talk about that other text editor. Join Chris and Harry as they dive into the wild world of Emacs and see what things look like on the other side of the aisle.
Chris Toomey and Ben Orenstein
The Chrome DevTools are an amazing tool and a critical part of our workflow on Upcase and client apps. Tune in as Ben & Chris discuss their favorite features and tips for getting the most out of the DevTools.
Chris Toomey
When all you have is the hammer of Rails, everything looks like a database backed dynamic site. But often we'd be much better served by a simple static site, and Middleman is a great choice for building these static sites. Join Chris as he shows...
Joe Ferris and Chris Toomey
Slow and redundant database queries got you down? Well have no fear! On this week's episode, Chris and Joe dive deep into the strategies you can use to optimize your queries and get your app back to ludicrous speed ASAP.
Chris Toomey and Joe Ferris
Tests are code too, and they deserve the same love and careful refactoring you'd show to your production code. In fact, there are a number of antipatterns and pitfalls unique to test code that can trip you up. Tune in to learn all the dos and...